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Detroit Mayor Dave Bing / MANDI WRIGHT/Detroit Free Press

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When Dave Bing stepped up to be mayor of one of the nation's most troubled cities, he put more on the line than his new political reputation.

He faced a rewrite of his epitaph.

As Detroit Free Press sports columnist Drew Sharp posits in his new book, "Dave Bing: A Life of Challenge," Bing, a gifted high school and college basketball player, may be facing his last chance at the greatness he feels has eluded him.

He was:

• A superstar at Syracuse University whose teams never won an NCAA championship, and the Pistons Great Fast Hope whose teams never won an NBA championship.

• A superior student of life and business who created Bing Steel from scratch and became a millionaire by age 30, but whose company was a casualty of the auto industry crisis. "Bing hoped he could leave an enduring business footprint in the city of Detroit, Sharp writes, "... but the reality is that Bing Steel would be remembered as a short-term success."

• A man who has spent his life turning adversity into opportunity, but who is nearing the end of the game. Bing, who played baseball as a boy until an eye injury made him switch to basketball, is at bat facing a full count. He has swung and missed. He has hit some foul balls.

And he is being booed in town halls the same way Detroit booed him when a contract dispute led him to sit out the first games of his final Pistons season.

If Bing hits a home run, will he sway voters enough for him to run for a second full term? Or will he have to walk away a third time -- in his mind, Sharp suggests, without the top prize?

While Sharp makes a case for Bing not reaching the pinnacle in his first two careers, one thing is clear: No one in his or her right mind would consider Dave Bing anything other than a success. He is a tribute to his parents, Hasker and Juanita, who raised a fine man. He has offered time and again examples of what true loyalty looks like. He has paid for the funerals of players whose choices were worse than his, and he is devoted to his administrative team, even rehiring his friend Kirk Lewis, the man he mentored as a child, but whom he had forced off his team.

Sharp writes that when Bing stepped up to revive a city suffering increasing poverty and decreasing population, the athlete-businessman, for the first time, may have bitten off more than he could chew.

"Why risk a legacy of extraordinary accomplishments in sports and business for an obvious political crapshoot?" Sharp writes. "If he disappointed -- or downright failed -- in resuscitating a city already on an economic respirator, it could dramatically overshadow those prior achievements. ...

"Bing's sizable ego got the better of his judgment," Sharp writes. "He bought into the hype, thinking of himself as the city's savior, restoring honor and integrity to the office. And he wasn't accustomed to Detroit's strong criticism of him. But he didn't realize then ... that the task required more than a willingness to simply do right by the position."

The book traces Bing's life from the Washington, D.C., basketball courts to Syracuse University to the Detroit Pistons to business and, finally, politics. Sharp leaves a breadcrumb trail that offers a greater understanding of Bing's psyche and how he uses lessons he learned.

After Bing and his team lost to Duke in the 1966 NCAA tournament, Wake Forest courted his coach, Freddie Lewis. Bing couldn't believe Lewis would leave Syracuse. Lewis explained that he was negotiating for permanent rather than temporary seats for the basketball arena, Manley Field House, which had begun life as an indoor football arena.

The lesson: "Always negotiate from a position of strength, and, whenever possible, separate emotion from practicality."

Before the 1966 NBA draft, Bing represented himself in negotiations.

Oh, if only he'd done that as mayor.

In "A Life of Challenge," only three of 18 chapters deal with Bing as mayor. But in them, Sharp explains why Bing was late to react publicly to the shooting of a 7-year-old Aiyana Jones. (He was not to be disturbed on Sundays.) And Sharp gives perhaps too much weight to a lawsuit that painted the inner workings of Bing's administration as no better than an episode of "The Young and the Restless," starring Karen Dumas, the communications director whom Bing eventually asked to resign.

In the end, however, Sharp asks the most important questions regarding Bing's legacy:

"Bing understood that the referendum on his time as mayor would dominate the perception of his overall legacy," Sharp writes. "His identity as a basketball Hall of Famer and business magnate ... wasn't forgotten, but after his election, he'd forever be thought of as Mayor Bing, not Dave Bing."

Fair or not, a legacy is at stake. And those who are grateful that Bing stepped up are still rooting for him to win.

ROCHELLE RILEY is a columnist for the Detroit Free Press. Contact her at rriley99@freepress.com or 313-223-4473.